Germany: Linnemann's "Bürgergeld Part 2" — stricter welfare rules paired with tax relief

CDU general secretary Carsten Linnemann is pushing a second stage of welfare reform: ending the minijob tax exemption for benefit claimants, stricter exclusions, wider data-sharing on problem properties, and longer clawback periods, paired with raising the top income-tax threshold to €80,000+. Since 1 July, housing-cost reimbursement under the new Grundsicherung is capped at 1.5× the local benchmark rent from day one.

The explicit pairing — tougher conditionality funding middle-class tax relief — is a fiscal-political trade the UK right has discussed but never executed cleanly; the hard local rent cap is a live idea for UK housing-benefit reform.